"You've probably heard of Damon Hill, though, and things being what they are I found myself recently squeezed into Spyker's latest effort - the C8 Double 12S - at a notorious test track in Bedfordshire. Frankly, neither of us knew what to make of it, and at least one of us was more than a little nervous. Since retiring at the end of 1999, Damon has largely avoided racing cars, but here we both were pulling on four-point harnesses and wondering exactly how worried we should be about the aroma of petrol that was slowly enveloping us.
In truth, the Spyker was a bit half-baked, but in an impressive sort of way. The S model is merely a £200,000-plus street version of the R (Spyker's Le Mans 24-Hours contender) and it features all the expected racing accoutrements - an aluminium-alloy spaceframe chassis, somewhere in the region of 500bhp and brakes that could drag an errant Space Shuttle to a halt. I'd never driven anything as savage in my life, while Damon made it do things no human has any right to do to any piece of machinery, however powerful.
We pummelled it mercilessly around the track for about five hours and it didn't miss a beat. Its Dutch guardians smiled beatifically, delighted, no doubt, that Hill hadn't barrel-rolled it down a hill. Not least because this very car was due to make its world debut at the motor show a few days later.
So, go and see it. Be glad that it's there, and that Spyker is too. And say hello to Hans, Maarten and Victor if you see them.
• BBC1 will be broadcasting Jason Barlow and Damon Hill's test drive of the Spyker C8 Double 12S tomorrow (Sunday Oct 27) at 3.50pm as part of Motor Show 2002."